Out.
Gentle swells lifted and fell, and Ari’s eyes widened in horror as a twig peeled away from the trunk closest to the center of the headboard and stretched toward her.
It chuffed, the two leaves that clung to it flaring like nostrils.
It was sniffing her.
Ari scrambled back until she was at the far edge of the bed. Panic, bright and jagged, raced through her, leaving her trembling in its wake.
Hallucination or not, she needed out of this room before she started screaming.
Without giving herself time to second-guess it, Ari leaped out of bed, skidded across the floor, and shoved her feet into her sandals as the (completely creepy) floor rippled and shuddered beneath her. Then she raced for the door, hauled it open, and hurried into the hall.
Her room was on the second floor, close to the landing on the stairs that connected all three levels of the villa. The hall was covered with a thick green rug, and thankfully the floor remained still as she grabbed the wooden bannister and started down the stairs.
Halfway down, a twig curled out of the underside of the bannister and brushed the back of her hand. She yanked her hand to her chest and stumbled down the rest of the stairs, bracing herself in case something else that shouldn’t be alive reached for her.
Lanterns already burned in the main level of the house as the gloom of twilight filled the sky outside the windows. Ari stood in the parlor at the base of the stairs, trying to figure out where to find the kitchen, even as she watched the walls, floors, and anything else made of wood with a close eye. Plush chairs covered in evergreen velvet flanked bookcases that stretched from the floor to the ceiling along one wall. The other wall held curio shelves full of fairy statuettes dancing in grotesquely beautiful poses, carved ivory instruments, and sculptures of beasts that looked at once familiar and terrifyingly strange. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust, but still the effect of the green rug and chairs, the wood-covered walls, and the pale yellow ceiling made her feel like she was trapped inside a fae forest.
Her pulse jerked unsteadily as one of the statuettes slowly pivoted until it could look Ari in the eyes.
The princess hugged herself and scanned the room for a way out. From the north side of the parlor, a hall bisected the back of the villa with doors leading to rooms on either side. In the other direction, the parlor’s doorway led to what looked like a formal dining room, which meant the kitchen would be close by.
Ari started in that direction, but froze when Teague’s polished marble voice echoed from the hallway behind her.
“Princess Arianna, I’ve been expecting you for some time. I’m told you woke nearly an hour ago.”
She turned, and the room seemed to quiver and stretch wider than it had been a moment earlier. Her voice sounded small as she asked, “Who told you that?”
He stepped into the parlor, his immaculate clothing pressed to perfection, his alabaster skin glowing in the lantern light, and smiled coldly. “The house, of course. It’s been months since it woke up. I never know what will set it off, but it seems to find humans interesting.”
Ari wanted to deliver a fabulously sarcastic reply, but the fairy statuette was slowly spinning, its face split with a maniacal smile, and several of the monstrous sculptures were blinking as they watched her.
Teague beckoned her toward him, and she moved forward on feet that felt as though she’d kept them in the frigid winter waters of the Chrysós for too long. Another twig unfurled from the closest wall and hovered over her head. She flinched and stepped aside before it could sniff her.
Teague’s laugh was cruel. “Best to let the fae wood get acquainted with you, or it will never leave you alone.”
“Fae wood?” She shuddered as the twig dipped down and swept its leaves over her cheek. Tiny little puffs of air tickled her skin, and she was swamped with the scent of damp forest floors and sunlit treetops.
“The house is built entirely out of trees I had chopped down on Llorenyae and then shipped here. It wakes when it wants to, sleeps when it wants to, and can be tricky if it decides it doesn’t like you.” He sounded sure the house was going to despise her.
Ari decided the feeling was mutual.
Working to make her voice sound as normal as possible, she said, “If my bed swallows me in the middle of the night, Thad won’t introduce you to any of his allies.”
Teague’s smile disappeared. “Foolish girl. Only the house is fae wood—floors, ceilings, walls. Everything else is from Súndraille.”
Ari eyed the curio shelves as another statuette smiled, sending a crack through its plaster face. “And those?”
“Keepsakes from my homeland. Come along, Princess. You’re needed in the library.”
Without giving her a chance to respond, he gripped her arm firmly and guided her along the hallway to the second door on the left. The library was lit by lanterns resting along the middle of an enormous table that stretched down the center of half the room. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crowded every wall, though some of the shelves had been used to store weapons in glass cases, decanters of wine, or more creepy relics from Llorenyae.
Teague turned Ari away from the table, and she found a sitting area in the other half of the library with six upholstered green chairs surrounding a plain wooden spinning wheel that sat beside a basket of hay. A man huddled in one of the chairs, his wrists bound by rope. Another thick rope was lodged between his teeth and tied behind his head, making it impossible for him to clearly speak.
“Have a seat, Princess.” Teague motioned toward the chair beside the bound man.
“Why?” she whispered as the man’s eyes sought hers and begged for something—for help? for mercy? Whatever he needed, she had no power to give it.
“Because you’re here to ensure that I expand my business interests across the kingdoms.” His feral golden eyes held hers. “And I’d like you to see what happens to someone who gets in my way instead. Object lessons are so much more effective when they’re delivered face-to-face.”
She shook her head, but the look on Teague’s face turned her knees to jelly, and she collapsed in the chair beside the captive man. He made a noise in the back of his throat, but Ari couldn’t bear to look at him. Instead, she stared at Teague as he sat at the spinning wheel and picked up a few long pieces of straw. Pressing the straw against the leader yarn, which was already threaded and attached to the bobbin, he adjusted the tension knobs and began treadling. The flyer spun quickly, and the straw twisted. Ari’s mouth dropped open as instead of straw, the bobbin began collecting a spool of glittering gold thread as thick as a candlewick.